Nord Stage 3 broken key?

[gregmidd10]

During my gig last Friday night I suddenly noticed one key (B above middle C) was resting about 1/8" lower than the rest of the keybed, and the action felt "broken". It is still playable as far as getting a tone, but the action feels like there's no resistance at all, so it feels odd when striking it. This is the HP76, hammer action portable model.

Has anybody experienced this, and if so, can you share any knowledge about how extensive a repair it would be to fix this key? Thanks!!

[whitenoise]

You need to get it to a technician to check. It should be fixable.

[Bjoern M]

Hi Gregmidd10,

same symptom here. The weight is broken off the key. For me it happened during play.
I opened the side panel to remove the weight and prevent further damage. And for the fotos:

PXL_20240914_125930091.jpg (1.92 MiB) Viewed 1729 times

The weights other keys also are like a little cracked. E.g.

PXL_20240914_130009703.jpg (1.96 MiB) Viewed 1729 times

Looks like my nord stage 3 needs some repair.
How did this turn out for you. Did you replace the whole keybed or single weights?

[Bjoern M]

The answer - fixed with glue - is here:

viewtopic.php?p=175411&hilit=Repair+keybed#p175411

[Mr_-G-]

I am not dismissing the idea, but epoxy resin is not suitable for most plastics... Hopefully it might stick to the metal part and somehow fill those 4 holes near the corners and mechanically lock it in place?

[Bjoern M]

I used cyanoacrylate-based superglue, both for the broken part and on the worst cracks. Until now everything works.
Superglue seems to get brittle over time, so most probably I have to mend it again in some month - or order a cupple of weights and exchange them when broken.

[gregmidd10]

I glued the original broken key with superglue, and it broke again a while later, so this time I bought a Loctite glue specific for plastics, that has an activator prior to the glue. I glued the same key again, and so far so good, time will tell.

I broke ANOTHER key this past weekend (I play in a Mumford-style band and play pretty heavy handed when gigging), so just went under the hood again and glued that one. I feel like this must be a problem specifically with the HP76 keybed, I don't know if anybody has experienced this with other models? I'm wanting to upgrade to a Stage 4 for gigs, hoping the keybed in the Stage 4's are improved. I looked at getting replacement hammer weights from Syntaur, but it kind of looks like replacing them is a bigger headache than just gluing the broken ones back on.